The Duchess War Page 12

  Chapter Twelve

  It took Minnie no effort on the next day to maneuver the Duke of Clermont into a nearly private conversation. After all, handbills were best put up in pairs—and once that had been established, Lydia latched herself on to Marybeth Peters and marched across the road, paste and paper in hand, leaving Minnie alone with the duke.

  Not truly alone. They were on a public thoroughfare, for one, and Lydia and Marybeth were within shouting distance on the other side of Haymarket. People drifted down the streets. A man was selling chestnuts on the corner; some boys had made a fire on the pavement, one that they carefully fed with bits of rubbish.

  And Minnie didn’t know what to say to him. What was he up to? He’d given her that letter. He’d told her he wanted her, and she still felt shivers down her spine when she remembered the look in his eyes as he said those words. And then he’d used her words in a pamphlet, darkening the cloud of suspicion that followed her.

  Instead of trying to sort all that out, she handed him the pot of paste. “What do you know of manual labor?”

  “Um…” His eyes twinkled at her. “I’ve read about it. I toured the factories I inherited from my grandfather. I’ve made it a point to talk with workers when I have the chance.”

  “But you’ve never done it.”

  “Not…as such.”

  Minnie handed the duke a wooden stick. “Congratulations,” she said. “You are about to lower yourself to new depths.”

  “I can hardly wait.” He took the clay pot in bemusement and followed her down the pavement. She stopped at the first corner and held up a handbill.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  “You take the paste,” she explained, “and you put it on the handbill. Then I put the handbill on the wall.”

  “Just like that?” He unscrewed the top from the pot, dipped the stick in, and clumsily glopped the white mess onto the handbill Minnie was holding.

  “You are an untidy paster.” She turned from him, slapped the paper against the brick, and marched on.

  She didn’t think he’d meant to cause her problems. He looked at her as if nothing had happened. And for him, nothing had changed. They’d smiled at each other on the train, and she’d told him she liked him.

  When she turned away, she caught his smile at her words. His smiles were like flashes of lightning come at night, swift and fleeting, lighting up the entire landscape for a few moments before vanishing once again. Smiles like that, she reminded herself grimly, might look pretty, but they could still leave heaps of smoking rubble behind.

  “Well,” he said, just behind her, his voice low and amused. “You know what they say. ‘Paste not, want not.’”

  She blinked. “Puns,” she said, without turning around, “are the lowest form of humor.”

  “Not when a duke utters them.”

  She held up a handbill for him to paste and then slapped it against the wall, holding it for a moment to be sure that it would adhere. “Are you a duke?” she asked. “I had thought you were a dead man.”

  His Grace, the Duke of Clermont, showed no sign that he’d heard her. Instead, he held the paste pot in his hand and smiled. “Shall we proceed to the next corner? Miss Peters and Miss Charingford are already outpacing us.” His eyes slid to hers. “Outpasting us,” he corrected.

  She was not—absolutely not—going to be seduced into laughing with him and making inappropriate jokes about paste. Minnie compressed her lips and stalked down the street.

  He followed. “Is something…wrong? Did you read my letter?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I read everything you wrote. And I’m furious with you.”

  “Now, now,” he admonished, “don’t be pasty.” He gave a chuckle—one that terminated as she turned to him and he caught sight of her expression. The smile slid off his face. “Oh. You really are angry. Did I do something wrong?”

  Did he do something wrong? She wanted to punch him. “Your latest masterpiece. I cannot believe what you said.”

  His nose wrinkled. “Why? Because a strike would hurt your friends? Because you don’t care about the conditions under which workers labor? Or do you think I shouldn’t have written them? That I should keep silent, stew in my own thoughts—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said in exasperation. “If I thought you shouldn’t be writing those damned handbills, I would already have shown your letter to the town magistrates. Sometimes, I want to scream, too—scream as loudly as I can, and never mind who hears me. I’m angry because you used my words in your latest endeavor! My words.”

  He blinked. “Oh.” He bit his lip. “That. Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose I did. Why wouldn’t I? They were good words.”

  “Don’t split hairs. Did you not hear Stevens talk? He has already accused me of radical sentiment. Why would you use a phrase you heard from me? Don’t you understand how impossible my life will be if suspicion falls on me?”

  With the workers in the factories until the evening whistle sounded, the streets were calm. A few women were out, trudging to the greengrocer; a harried laundress marched by with a sack on her shoulder. The rhythmic rumble of the machinery a few streets distant somehow made the streets seem quiet, blanketing all other noises.

  “I’m terrified,” she said, “and you have nothing to fear. It’s not fair.”

  Across the cobblestones and ten yards up, Lydia and Marybeth were placing handbills in a methodical way.

  “Well?” she demanded, shaking a handbill at him. “Don’t waste time. I need paste.”

  “Miss Pursling,” he said formally, “I do apologize.”

  He’d worn darker, rougher clothing for this outing—trousers of gray wool and a matching coat, the fabric coarse but the cut still perfect. Around his neck, he’d wound a soft, maroon scarf. His garb made him look not like a duke, but like some towheaded scoundrel—roguish, and maybe a little wicked. The kind of man who’d tempt a girl to walk outside with him at night, and who’d sneak her sips of heady spirits from a flask. It would be all too easy to become tipsy around him.

  He sounded sincere and she wanted to believe him. “You’re sorry for endangering me?”

  He looked sincere, too, with that slightly embarrassed smile. Then he looked up at her. He swirled the stick in the pot, then brought up the wooden stick, a big glob of paste stuck to the end.

  “No.” His words were mournful, but there was a twinkle in his eye. “Not for that. For this.”

  So saying, he flicked the stick at her midsection. She barely had the chance to lower the handbill in defense. The edge caught the glob of flying paste, breaking it in midair, spattering paste all over.

  She stared at him in disbelief. “I had not realized,” she said frostily, “that we were allowing twelve-year-old boys to take seats in the House of Lords.”

  He winked at her, then turned to the women on the other side of the street and waved. “We’ll be at the pump through the alley there,” he called out. “We’ve had a bit of a paste emergency over here.”

  “A paste emergency!” she huffed. “A paste assault, that’s what we had.”

  But he was already taking her arm, leading her down a narrow gap between two buildings, into a dingy courtyard where a pump stood. He took off his jacket before working the pump handle; she could see the form of his muscles through his shirtsleeves. She was terrified, and he was showing off.

  “For the record,” he said, as he worked the pump, “I am twenty-eight, not twelve.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Indeed. I’ve got you all alone after all.”

  He smiled at her again, and she felt speared by lightning. Minnie looked away. The pump let out a hollow whistle, signifying that the water had almost arrived.

  “It’s a messy business, flirting with you.”

  As he spoke, water gushed out of the pump head. He caught it in the bucket that was chained to the pump.

  “Well?” He raised an eyebrow. “You wanted to yell at me. I figured
I would give you a solid chance at doing so without causing a scene. Go ahead.”

  “Why did you use my words? Were you trying to endanger my reputation on purpose? Did you think that if I were blamed for it, you might escape all censure?”

  He simply shook his head. “I should have known you wouldn’t shriek.” He shrugged and unwound his scarf from his neck and dipped it in the bucket. “To answer your question, no, I didn’t intend any of that. I might have been a little thoughtless, but not malicious.” To her surprise, he knelt in front of her, and dabbed at a spot of paste on her skirt with his scarf. “It was simply this,” he said, his attention seemingly fixed on the paste. “You’ve made an impression on me. If you could recognize your words in what I said, it was because my thoughts have been on you.” He looked up at her. “Often.”

  It wasn’t fair that he could rob her heart of anger and her lungs of air with just one word. His gaze held hers overlong.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Here he was, on his knees before her, and yet she was the one slipping under his spell.

  Minnie looked away. “That doesn’t change anything. It’s still put me in an untenable position. I don’t know what to do. You can’t just apologize and expect me to smile at you.”

  He dropped his eyes from hers—not in surrender, but with a nonchalant air, as if to say he couldn’t be bothered—and dabbed at another spot of paste.

  She couldn’t even feel his hands through her skirt. And yet she could imagine them, imagine that the slight pressure he exerted on her skirts transmitted itself to her petticoats, and from there to her drawers, her stockings, her legs. She shut her eyes as he worked his way upward.

  The higher he got, the more she could feel it. When he got to the last bit of paste, there was nothing but the truth. He was touching her stomach. Through layers of cloth and corset, yes—but that was his hand against her belly. She sucked in a breath.

  “I can’t believe you threw paste at me,” she muttered. “That has to be the stupidest thing—”

  “Of course it was stupid.” He looked at the damp end of his scarf and then shrugged and tossed it over his shoulder. “That’s just the way these things go.” He stood as he spoke, leaving Minnie looking down—directly at the buttons on his vest.

  “That’s the way things go?” she echoed dubiously. “Are you claiming to be a fool, Your Grace?”

  “Under certain circumstances.” His voice dropped to a low murmur, and he leaned down so that he was almost whispering in her ear. “You see, there’s this woman.”

  She wasn’t going to look at him. She wasn’t.

  “Normally, one might say that there was a beautiful woman—but I don’t think she qualifies as a classical beauty. Still, I find that when she’s around, I’d rather look at her than anyone else.”

  He set two fingers against her cheek, and Minnie sucked in a breath. She was not going to look at him. He’d see the longing in her eyes, and then…

  “There’s something about her that draws my eye. Something that defies words. Maybe it’s her hair, but I tried to tell her that, and she told me I was being ridiculous. I suppose I was. Maybe it’s her lips. Maybe it’s her eyes, although she so rarely looks at me.”

  Those fingers on her cheek trailed down to her jaw. Minnie felt frozen in place.

  “She’s clever,” he murmured. “Every time I see her I discover that I’ve underestimated her prowess. She ties me in knots.”

  They were just words—words that any man would say if he wanted to turn a lady’s head. Just words. They didn’t mean anything, not really.

  But they were not just words. Nobody had ever said them to her; she hadn’t even known she wanted to hear them until he uttered them. Now they lodged like a knife between her ribs. She longed for them to be true—yearned for it so much that each breath hurt.

  “What are you trying to say?” Minnie said to his waistcoat buttons. Her voice didn’t waver. It didn’t falter. “That you’re overmatched? We had already established that.”

  “Of course I’m overmatched.” He was lightly stroking her cheek. “The male of the human species has a fundamental flaw. At the moment when we most want to say something clever and impressive, all the blood rushes from our brains.”

  “It does?”

  “Physiological fact,” His Grace said. “Arousal makes me stupid. It makes me say idiotic things like ‘I like your tits’ and, ‘Help, we’ve had a paste emergency over here.’ It makes me want to stay around you even though I know I’m overmatched, even though I’m sure you’re going to win.” His voice lowered. “You see, I want to watch you do it.”

  She swallowed. And for that moment, she believed him. That she would win, somehow, win through to some future so impossibly bright it blinded her even to think of it.

  “Even though I know I’m going to say foolish things,” he said. “And, apparently, throw paste at you.” There was a pause. “Sorry about that,” he finally said. “God, that was dumb.”

  “I thought there were…things…that the male of the human species could do about this physiological shortcoming.”

  He was still touching her, those two fingers lightly pressed against her jaw. She really couldn’t look at him as she spoke. Her whole face heated just thinking about what would be entailed in those things.

  “Not right here,” he said, sounding amused. “Not right now.”

  His thumb whispered against her lip, faintly recalling a kiss.

  “Not,” he said, very quietly, “with you. Alas.”

  Oh, she burned at that. Her skin seemed to catch flame. She felt herself grow damp beneath her skirts. But that wash of liquid want only made her sad.

  They’d both read the moment aright. Minnie was too genteel for him to bed in so casual a fashion, and yet not high enough for him to marry. That left her as nothing to him, a nonentity in skirts. Whatever this was between them, it was both heartbreakingly real—and impossibly nonexistent.

  His voice was rough when he spoke again. “So beat me to flinders,” he said. “Win. Overmatch me, Minnie. And when we’re alone…”

  His fingers touched her chin lightly.

  “When we’re alone,” he whispered, “look up.”

  He could have tilted her chin, forcing her to do so. But his forefinger remained warm and steady on her face. He waited, and in the end, Minnie couldn’t help herself. She looked up.

  His eyes met hers with a warm greeting.

  “Hullo, Minnie.” He didn’t smile. He didn’t lean down to her. But when he whispered, “I wish you’d call me Robert,” his voice was almost a caress.

  “Robert.”

  “This,” he whispered, in a solemn tone of voice, “is where I would say something exceedingly clever, had my brains not been turned to paste.”

  “How do you seduce anyone if you can’t talk at this stage?” she asked.

  “I—” He stopped, shook his head, and flung his hands out in frustration.

  It’s a Lane family tradition. When you’ve backed the other fellow into a corner, you give him a kiss to show there’s no hard feelings.

  “I see how it is,” she said softly.

  “You do?”

  She didn’t. She couldn’t see anything at all. She didn’t know what to do about Stevens, what to do with the future that appeared to be crumbling before her eyes. This was the exact opposite of the moment when she would have kissed a chess piece.

  But looking into his eyes, she saw not endings, not the finality of marriage to a man who didn’t know her, not the gray certainty of some future workhouse. She saw beginnings.

  It was utterly impossible, this attraction between them.

  “I do see,” Minnie said. “You don’t seduce women.”

  He gave her a half smile. “Heh. Well. About that…”

  “They seduce you.” And then, before she could think it through—before she could outline the shouldn’ts and the nevers—she popped up on her toes. There were only inches between them, and Minni
e closed the distance without thinking.

  He made a soft exhalation of surprise. His lips were warm on hers, and after that first moment of shock, his arms closed around her.

  “Like this,” he murmured, and then his lips were not just pressed to hers, but moving along her mouth, coaxing the kiss from her.

  His kiss was not an end, either, but a vibrant new thing, brilliant with possibility. His lips met hers, captured hers, over and over. When their tongues met, his hands came to either side of her face, holding her close, bringing her to him so roughly she feared she might break.

  He kissed her and she pressed against him, her hands against his chest, his waistcoat buttons digging into her. Her fingers slid under his scarf, pulling him close.

  And then he stepped away. Minnie opened her eyes to the courtyard, to the pump.

  He smiled. “I believe that is the first time I’ve ever commanded your full attention.”

  “Robert.” She swallowed awkwardly.

  “In answer to what you said… You’re right. I don’t just owe you an apology. I can only repeat what I have told you before. I won’t leave you worse off than I met you. I know you’re worried. I know I can be thoughtless. But I don’t stay thoughtless, Miss Pursling. There’s a great deal I can do, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. My word on it.”

  She shouldn’t believe him. It was impossible for him to simply assert that. He’d already ruined her inside, made her question the bleak landscape of her life. He’d made her hope. She felt as if she were floating in the clouds, now. And that meant the ground was such a long, long way down.

  “I shouldn’t believe you.” She ran her hands over her face. “I should go give your letter to Mr. Charingford right now.”

  “You should have done it two days ago.”

  She felt a shy smile take over her face. “I know.”

  She handed him back his paste pot. Their fingers met as she did, and her whole body sang in response. And for the first time, Minnie realized that he was too clever by half. She hadn’t overmatched him. He’d handed her the key to his downfall…and made it nearly impossible for her to use it.